CUMMINGS, E. E.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Tulips & Chimneys. The Archetype edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to his French translator on the front free endpaper, "inscribed by E. E. Cummings for D. Jon Grossman 10 May '51". Grossman has studiously annotated the contents in pencil, and two early typed drafts of Cummings's verse are loosely inserted.The draft of "Arthur Wilson," later titled "as usual I did not find him in cafes," includes several annotations and textual differences compared to the printed poem on page 104. Grossman has credited the poem's periodical debut to the margin in pencil: "Broom in July 1922". Similarly, the draft of "by god i want above fourteenth" is loosely inserted at page 167, showing altered line spacing but no textual differences.David Jonathan Grossman (1922-1990) first met Cummings whilst attending Peter Monro Jack's course at Columbia night school in 1941-42. After serving in the Second World War, Grossman attended Harvard in 1946 and began writing a thesis on Cummings, which he never finished. By 1960 he had published his first translation, and in 1980 he was awarded the Prix Halperine-Kaminsky for his Cummings translations.This copy is number 324 of 629; the first 148 copies were signed and issued in deluxe bindings. Tulips & Chimneys was first published in 1923 in an abbreviated form by Thomas Seltzer; this edition comprises the original 1922 manuscript and includes 84 poems not present in the first edition.

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